Ladies! Scare off creepy pickup artists by looking like someone who goes to protests!

The lady-botherers at Return of Kings have done the women of the world a huge favor today, offering them one weird trick that will enable them to avoid the icky attentions of the idiots who read Return of Kings.

It’s really quite simple: look like the sort of woman who protests Trump on the regular.

As Derian sees it, protesting is pretty much the equivalent of being addicted to prescription painkillers. “We attend protests for one reason and one reason only,” he boldly declares,

to cover up psychological issues we cannot manage on our own. We fabricate an impending social change because the real reason for our march is horrifying. In this sense, treat a girl who goes to a protest like a girl who has an addiction to pain killers. To anyone who isn’t in pain, vicodin doesn’t feel good—it feels like a low-grade death.

Weird, because that’s exactly the feeling I get reading Return of Kings.

Derian, drawing liberally from a vast assortment of alleged facts he keeps stored in his posterior, explains that protesty gals suffer from a wide assortment of psychological problems. The assortment is so wide that many of his complaints more or less cancel each other out.

On the one hand, protesty gals are “anti-social,” so socially maladjusted that they can’t accept that “other people have different views and … still be civil.”

On the other hand, protesty gals are too social, surrounded by “low-quality friends,” some of whom might even be fat.

A destructive relationship is like two crabs in a bucket, and a million woman march is a million crabs in a bucket. It’s a validation station of each other’s obesity and loneliness.

Protesty gals read too much:

A girl who has a sense of what it means to be happy wouldn’t be online reading news, the only purpose of which is to stoke her fear and anger. The most feminine girls I’ve known have come from different backgrounds, but they all had one thing in common: limited media consumption.

But they also read too little:

I appreciate a girl who reads—not xoJane but books. Reading indicates the ability to have and express thoughts, not opinions. It indicates the desire to learn, not consume. It indicates an interest in museums, not night clubs. It indicates the ability to sit and be okay with yourself, not get a hit from the world’s most powerful benzo—the self-righteousness of the mob.

This from a guy whose idea of great literature is Roosh’s BANG series of rape dating guides.

But in the end it doesn’t really matter why Derian dislikes protesty gals, just that he does.

While this is a great relief for those women who are currently engaging in mass protest, women who aren’t protesting at this moment may be mistaken for women who never protest, which leaves them at great risk of creepy dudes approaching them on the street to ask them where the nearest pet store is.

So how does one look like a protester when one is not currently protesting something? Here are a few tips:

Carry a protest sign with you at all times.

Wear one of those pink pussy hats at all times, even indoors and while sleeping.

Sometimes I get the idea that these guys write these screeds hoping that someone will point all the HB8-10s to them so that they can read them and know what they need to do to get their approval and attention.

Other times, I feel like these guys write these screeds hoping that the other dudes that read them will eschew large swaths of attractive women (because they don’t woman correctly) leaving better odds for themselves.

Then I realize that these fellas are really just a bunch of entitled dunderheads devoid of empathy and full of irrational fear who like to project their nasty delusions onto others.

In other news, I had a physical for the first time in probably ten years with a new doctor who isn’t fixated on my weight! He’s only interested in my lab numbers which are pretty good. I just need to work on my bad cholesterol and BP a bit. So YAY!

I have started on my second pussy hat which is also not pink. I’ve found that my carpal tunnel allows me to do a lot more crochet than knitting at one time, so I’m doing a Tunisian mock knit stitch to get the look I want.

I’ll spare no drop of pity for the bruises that a fascist suffers.
I’ll shed no tear for their disgrace,
nor mourn their bludgeon’d fucking face,
while their fester-swollen cantaloupe President stutters
his hate-thick gobs of spittle cross the world’s stage.
I’ve tolerance for many things,
even those who want to keep to kin,
but for those hateful pukes who take race and sex and flags as a gauge?
I have no time. I have no time for evil’s whine,
the false-mewling beg for pity,
the thin-lipped, poison-tipped, compassion-ripped-from-broken-hearts’ cry for pity
of the wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing, bleating, cheating
its way into the heart of the kind
like ring-worm, like disease.
I bare my teeth at your disgraceful, petulant whimper,
you would-be-wolf with a fleecy shawl,
trying to twist the heart of goodness to your evil end,
trying to plead for mercy in a Confed’rate drawl
while those unbroken chains still trail behind the bend
of your crooked, matted, wolfen tail.
Shove that molting appendage between your legs
and run, you cowards, you buzzards, you carrion-flies.
We punch fuckin’ Nazi’s here, and we can see right through your lies.

The original fairy tale is for sure a creepy story of kidnapping and emotional manipulation. In the version I’ve read, the Beast is more polite than in the Disney version, but the story still has the strong Stockholm Syndrome aspect, plus the emotionally manipulative “I’ll die if you don’t marry me” WTFery at the end. It’s just ugly from beginning to end.

I can’t say I agree with you about the Disney version, though, although the idea of it being a POV story for the Beast is interesting and worth some consideration. I disagree mainly because of some key scenes in the movie that differ wildly from the fairy tale:

1) Belle is the one who suggests the trade: she will take her sick father’s place as Beast’s prisoner. This is important because not only does this make Belle an active participant, but also makes the father far more sympathetic than the cowardly daughter-bartering asshole in the original tale (Maurice, the Disney version of the father, strongly and vocally opposes the trade). Plus, in this version Beast, who is at this time resigned to his fate, has nothing to do with the actual kidnapping of Belle. Sure, he agrees to the trade, and was a possessive, compassionless jerk in his treatment of the trespassing Maurice in the first place, lawfully or not (the old dude was lost in the woods at night and found a nice warm castle, give him a break, man), but this was established from the beginning on as a character flaw that he would need to overcome.

2) Belle only takes so much of Beast’s shit. She refuses his attempts at connecting because yeah, just because I’m your prisoner does not mean I have to like you or socialize with you, jerk. At this point, Beast is most definitely a bad guy, and Belle rightfully treats him as such. Once he flies into a rage over the magic rose, Belle goes fuck this and flees. She’s also the one making the decision to return to treat the injured Beast’s wounds after it is clear to her that he would die out in the snow if she didn’t help him*. He doesn’t have a say in that. This scene is important because it establishes that Belle never contracted Stockholm’s Syndrome in this version: once Beast starts acting like an abusive jerk, he flat out leaves his ass. No explanations, no pleadings, no trying to change who she is to fit his ideal, not even a bye-bye, asshole. Just up and gone.

3) The crucial character growth moment by the fireplace. Belle gives Beast a piece of her mind, and Beast can’t ultimately refute what she says: he was totally the one at fault. This scene is important because it marks the beginning of Beast starting to make conscious efforts to act like less of a jerk. The relationship between Belle and the Beast only begins developing after this, as Beast actively starts getting in touch with his emotions and growing as a person.

4) The scene where Belle finds out her father is dying and Beast realizes that he needs to let her go to him. Beast seems to still have some hopes that she might decide to come back (what with giving her the magic mirror and all), but he doesn’t emotionally blackmail her to return as he does in the original fairy tale. He accepts that she goes away and likely will not return, which will doom him to the curse, but letting her go is really the only option for him at this point. This marks the culmination point for his character, as now he has learned to put someone else’s needs above his own.

The above I can’t really say could be Beast’s imagination of Belle’s point of view, since it involves him constantly changing and admitting he’s the one who’s wrong and needing to change, and I don’t know, that seems like a weird thing for an abuser to imagine how things go.

As for the comparison to Gaston, it’s fair, and I think it was even deliberate at the beginning. Like Gaston, Beast starts out embracing many toxic masculine ideals; for instance, he is constantly angry because he’s never learned to express any of his other, traditionally feminine emotions, like compassion and sensitivity. However, the difference to me is that Gaston never learns the lessons that Beast does. He never learns to respect Belle as a person, he never learns that he is not entitled to her attention, and he never learns that his behavior is flat-out wrong, and that he and only he is responsible for improving himself. Beast does all this, but Gaston would rather bask in the adoration of the villagers than try to become a better person. The movie does a great job at illustrating the harmful effects of surrounding yourself with people who uniformly admire you and never call you out on your shit.

Thankfully, Disney toned down the “manipulative nice guy Beast” thing in their movie, which is a huuuuge issue in the original fairy tale. Instead we have the self-serving, matchmaking furniture, especially Lumière, taking that part. Yes, they were afraid of remaining household items forever, and saw Belle as their last hope, but still. Jesus, guys.

All that said, the movie is far from perfect. The whole idea that it’s a woman’s job to teach a man to become less shitty is still sexist as shit, and makes Belle something of a side character in her own story in favour of Beast’s story arc. Beast in the beginning still seems like a bit too much of an asshole to realistically start changing in any reasonable time frame. Real beauty is on the inside? Yeah, right: It’s not the fact that he’s a big, hairy beast that’s a problem, it’s that he’s a giant fucking jerk. False marketing, guys. The scene with Beast giving the library to Belle could be interpreted as either a sweet gesture or totally a bribe (like a Nice Guy(TM) buying gifts to the woman they’re pursuing), and I couldn’t really say either way. Also, even as a kid with no understanding about gender issues, I wondered about the whole “real beauty is on the inside” thing never for some reason applying to female characters. Why are the male characters never expected to learn that lesson, and why are the women consistently super conventionally attractive in stories about real beauty being on the inside? Hmm, I wonder why.

*Yeah, this one is a bit iffy, even disregarding the whole “man saves woman’s life, woman now likes man” possibility for interpretation. Why did you follow her, Beast? Was it to apologize? I don’t buy that, since you hadn’t had your character growth moment yet and were still a total jerk at the time. Was it simply to save her life because you knew that the wolves of plot convenience prowl around at night? If so, good on you. Or was it because you wanted to drag her back by force because you had a deal and blah blah blah? In that case, fuck you. The movie doesn’t really give us a clear answer.

Granted, I really like the movie (mainly because the bad guy is for once a believable, real-life bad guy, not a cartoon villain with plans for world domination), so I may be biased. As for the straight-to-video sequel (midquel?) The Enchanted Christmas, that’s some grade A Stockholm’s right there. Avoid at all cost.

I wonder what the live action version will be like, especially since the same director directed Twilight. Why would you choose the director of a movie about a toxic relationship that is supposed to be seen as romantic to direct a movie that is popularly perceived to be about a toxic relationship that is supposed to be seen as romantic unless you want to promote the idea that the movie is about a toxic relationship that is supposed to be seen as romantic, hmm, Disney?

Because Nazis are bullies. They want to have the monopoly on hurting others. They gleefully talk about beating up people, lynching people, even genocide. It’s a clear plan they have. They want to make it legal to round up minorities and kill them. They think the only fault Hitler had was that he lost. Not that he murdered countless people, but that he lost the war. Imagine how morally bankrupt you would have to be to not care that he murdered all those people.

Nazis don’t care about fairness, discussion, or tolerance. They only care about strength. Showing them compassion and giving them room to speak only emboldens them. It only makes them think that we are weak and can be pushed around.

“You must tolerate my intolerance” is the talk of bullies. It’s the talk of those who want to walk straight over well-meaning people in order to get what they want. It’s the talk of Nazis and Nazi apologists.

And you know what? You already believe that liberals resort to violence at every turn. You said it so yourself: “Liberal tolerance shines through yet again“. Those are your words. You have already judged liberals to be inherently violent, so why the pearl-clutching? Own it. Own the fact that liberals will fight back this time, and won’t let conservatives bully them around any more. If you already believe liberals to be violent, nothing will have changed.

But we both know why you really said it, don’t we? You try to desperately keep the genie in the bottle. You dare to criticize your ideological opponents for the things you believe in because you want to keep bullying. You want your opponents, and victims, to be nice and compliant while you do whatever the hell you please. Because that’s how bullies think. You are a bully.

And your attempt to claim the moral high ground when you would not mind seeing even worse things than punching happening to minorities is despicable. That’s what Nazis want to do, and that’s why they need to be stopped, with punching, if need be. And there is a need, because Nazis don’t care about discussion, they only care about full and absolute control. They only care about violence, so let’s give it to them before they do even worse things to others. Maybe they’ll remember why violence is a bad thing if it comes their way for once.

Because Nazis are bullies. They want to have the monopoly on hurting others. They gleefully talk about beating up people, lynching people, even genocide. It’s a clear plan they have. They want to make it legal to round up minorities and kill them. They think the only fault Hitler had was that he lost. Not that he murdered countless people, but that he lost the war. Imagine how morally bankrupt you would have to be to not care that he murdered all those people.

Nazis don’t care about fairness, discussion, or tolerance. They only care about strength. Showing them compassion and giving them room to speak only emboldens them. It only makes them think that we are weak and can be pushed around.

“You must tolerate my intolerance” is the talk of bullies. It’s the talk of those who want to walk straight over well-meaning people in order to get what they want. It’s the talk of Nazis and Nazi apologists.

And you know what? You already believe that liberals resort to violence at every turn. You said it so yourself: “Liberal tolerance shines through yet again“. Those are your words. You have already judged liberals to be inherently violent, so why the pearl-clutching? Own it. Own the fact that liberals will fight back this time, and won’t let conservatives bully them around any more. If you already believe liberals to be violent, nothing will have changed.

But we both know why you really said it, don’t we? You try to desperately keep the genie in the bottle. You dare to criticize your ideological opponents for the things you believe in because you want to keep bullying. You want your opponents, and victims, to be nice and compliant while you do whatever the hell you please. Because that’s how bullies think. You are a bully.

And your attempt to claim the moral high ground when you would not mind seeing even worse things than punching happening to minorities is despicable. That’s what Nazis want to do, and that’s why they need to be stopped, with punching, if need be. And there is a need, because Nazis don’t care about discussion, they only care about full and absolute control. They only care about violence, so let’s give it to them before they do even worse things to others. Maybe they’ll remember why violence is a bad thing if it comes their way for once.

Speaking of comicbook depictions of Americans at war, Varalys (who posts here) has a rather excellent blog about comics. She recently covered a story dealing with the US’s involvement in Vietnam. Don’t know if that’s something that interests you but, if it does, it might be nice to hear some comments from someone who, unlike me, actually knows what they’re talking about.

(Oh, I also posted something for you back on that other thread. It’s probably irrelevant now, so I just hope things are getting a bit better for you)

“anti-social,” so socially maladjusted that they can’t accept that “other people have different views and … still be civil.”

hmmm… sounds like the donald….

@ Anarchonist;

well said

@ Scildfreja, re: poetry

WHOOOOOP!!!!!

It’s the burning irony that the same fascists who want to claim the high ground morally are supporting a man whose entire campaign for the highest office in America was an unbroken string of invective, insult and hatred directed at, well, at pretty much everybody.

ETA: re: inciting to violence… suggesting that, when the Gestapo comes to our door we greet them with a baseball bat is not an incitement to violence, it’s an encouragement to defend one’s life. Nazis want us dead.

They gleefully talk about beating up people, lynching people, even genocide. It’s a clear plan they have.

Not just talk. A nazi assaulted a gay man in broad daylight here in ‘progresive’ Portland the other day, and Hammerskins have been hanging around the gayborhood looking for easy marks. The time for breaking some nazi heads is well upon us. (And, Anonymous Fascist, even your idol Hitler agreed that the best way to stop fascism is by breaking fascist heads at every opportunity).

@WWTH

Oh, and another horrific thing about the story is how complicit Belle’s father is in the whole thing. Parents turning their children over to abusers sure is a common theme in fairytales.

And in real life, unfortunately. Especially in hyperpatriarchal cultures like… practically everywhere, really. Marry daughters off to abusive assholes who have money? Sure, pretty standard. Send sons off to unregulated apprenticeships where all manner of abuse was near-certain? What else would you do with a son? I’ll tell you what else: If you can’t marry her or prentice him, they’ll go for servants, and boy if you thought apprenticeships were abusive… And of course, worse things happen at sea.

@Alan
Regarding the other thread, thank you for the advice and kind words, it has given me a bit of motivation to say the least. As for the comic I found some interest in comparisons to the hero narrative that is so prevalent in military movies right now. More specifically in the first half where Castle had a very clear opportunity to end the war and be hailed as a hero by exposing rampant corruption, thereby also be immune to any repurcussiond by those who had benefited from the conflict. He didn’t because he wants war, other people didn’t factor into it. In a way it completely satirizes the skewed morals of military and hero narratives. Nick and Castle spares the child, a clear sign of innocence, but when given the option to save millions, those millions aren’t even a factor in their decision. The bad senator wins, the war industry continues for a few more years, the CIA is given more leeway into corruption and ultimately the US still loses. All because of two war mongerers’ bloodsoaked patriotism and their handler’s megalomania.

The ending perfectly encapsulates the futility of the war and some form of karmic justice by showing Nick and Giap shaking hands. It was really for naught, for both sides as the US only continued its military imperialist agenda at the cost of the nation’s people and infrastructure, and Vietnam is stuck as a third world nation where tech and social advancements has stagnated to this day. Even Pug, a master of Fury, his own abusive household gets his comeuppance by being killed by his own wife as vengeance for years of being used. Nick and Fury who both wanted the circumstances are ostracized by those left to remember them and are broken hollow people. Overall from what I’ve read of the review the comic book does a spectacular job in showing the horrors of war in ways many would like to forget or keep hidden.
@Dali
In cultures like that it’s also commonplace for fathers to never know how to raise their sons and daughters, because all they know of parenthood is neglect and being sent to masters interested in making workers and only workers.

Re: Milo at Berkeley… The right is all flummoxed over Milo getting his Peaches Frozen, but I recall an incident a while back where Anita Sarkeesian was denied the opportunity to speak at Utah State because of threats of violence… I don’t recall these airheads defending HER “right to speak freely”.

and speaking of that Constitutional provision, the Good Document says “Congress shall make no law…”, not “Twitter shall make no rule…”, not “The people shall have no objection…”, “CONGRESS…”

People with common decency CAN and DO object to your hate speech. The courts have extended the proviso to cover places like universities which operate on the public’s dollar, which is fine, but the students of those universities can say “NOT in this place”. The citizens can say likewise. Milo Yabbadabbadopolis has no Constitutional guarantee of a platform OR of an audience.

You’re not being fair to the Scots (or possibly too fair). Many Scotsmen didn’t really approve of bargaining for wives. Offended their thrifty souls. Much cheaper to just kidnap a woman or two while you’re out stealing cattle. (Admittedly, some of my personal Scottish ancestors were Borderers; The Highland clans had a great deal more chill, despite their (justified ) reputation.

Weird Eddie – I used to think that us social justice warriors turned up our noses at all those frozen peaches because of the bitter taste of hate and entitlement. Turns out that nasty aroma was due to more than a little bit of fascism, too.

If twitter were nationalized tomorrow, would you say that Milo then rightfully should get his account back?

Well, no. That’s why generally free speech laws have exemptions for hate speech. Using the “free speech laws only apply to government” argument doesn’t necessarily mean that government wouldn’t also be right to step in if they were involved, but rather that if the government isn’t involved then citing free speech is irrelevant.

@Fishy Goat
The Border Reivers and Moss-Troopers were mostly shut down in the early 17th century after James VI of Scotland became James I of England. At that point, diplomatic relations between the two nations became much better, and royal representatives on both sides of the border cooperated to put them down. Cattle theft continued to be a popular sport for another century or so, but kidnapping less so. After the harrowing of the Highlands in the aftermath of Culloden, the clan system and traditional practices were basically broken forever. In the case of some practices, it’s really for the better.

On occasion the Timely office would get phone calls and letters from Nazi sympathizers threatening the creators of Captain America. Once, while Jack was in the Timely office, a call came from someone in the lobby. When Kirby answered, the caller threatened Jack with bodily harm if he showed his face. Kirby told the caller he would be right down, but by the time Jack reached street level, there was no one to be found.

I’m fairly certain that the message of the original fairy tale is “Don’t worry, young one, the decrepit old man you’ll be marrying in a week may not be that bad.” On the other hand, the literally spelled-out moral of Bluebeard isn’t “Careful, you might marry a serial killer, and serial killers are bad” but “Silly curious women, don’t peek where you were told not to.”

Admittedly, no one knows how seriously we’re supposed to take Perrault’s moral tags.

We Hunted the Mammoth tracks and mocks the white male rage underlying the rise of Trump and Trumpism. This blog is NOT a safe space; given the subject matter -- misogyny and hate -- there's really no way it could be.